Conservative candidate discovers that Corby is too white and too British for public sector jobs

Louise Bagshawe, the Conservative candidate for Corby, has done a great job in exposing invidious criteria that the Prison Service is using to move jobs from 'too white' Corby to 'more diverse' Leicester. The full story is in the Daily Mail.

Replying to a letter from Louise Bagshawe, one of John Reid's top civil servants, Ann Beasley, highlights the fact that 40% of Leicester's population are not 'white British' as a "key influencing factor" on the decision to remove jobs from 94% 'white British Corby'.

Louise tells the Mail:

"Labour has controlled Corby council for 23 years and the town is
very deprived. We have the lowest wages in Northamptonshire. Now locals
are being told that Corby is too British for British jobs. I told Ann Beasley our town already has a thriving
Polish immigrant community, but she ignored this. Corby is just
beginning to turn the corner, but we need good jobs. Gordon Brown loves to bang on about Britishness - if he means
it, I call on him to reverse this disgraceful policy and tell Corby
people they aren't too "white British" for Government jobs."

There is now a real possibility that this Prison Service policy will be investigated by the Commission for Racial Equality.

People cannot help whether they are born black or white, nor should they need suffer because their ethnic skin colour is the majority/minority colour in any nation - whatever it may be.

This is blatant racism. Absolutely disgusting.

Not only should the prison service retract this policy. But the person responsible for it should be prosecuted.

These stupid discriminatory policies that left-wing Liberals feel is their sacred duty only fuel resentment, divide communities further and only serve to make people more conscious of their skin colour and how it can affect their chances in life.

At a time when the Home Office is in CRISIS, they still see fit to uproot an 80 strong office (thus losing all the accumulated experience) merely to hit some diversity target. It is disgusting and as we all know the cases that get revealed like this are the tip of the iceberg.

The problem in Corby simply reflects the PC of all mischieve making Labour Councils across the country. Labour has to rely on the ethnic minority votes in most of the local authorities and marginal constituencies to remain in power - and use their powers in town halls to do that.

It is a bit rich on the part of Brown to suddenly take up Britishness, because it was part of new Labours mantra that anything faintly British should be replaced with Multicultural trash and one of the most tolerant and integrated societies in the world has become polarised.

I only hope that the electors in the too white Corby recognise the fact that Labour is riding roughshod over them and come over en-masse to the conservative ranks.

Congratulations to Louise Bagshawe; I hope this gives her a real boost locally.

Apart from the unfairness of this policy, none of the Labour social engineers has ever proved why "being able to attract a more diverse workforce" creates an improvement. Will Prison Office administration suddenly improve simply because in Leicester the replacements are more likely to be of Asian descent? Surely the only criteria for recruitment are qualification and general merit? And that should be colour blind.

I'm disappointed the we have a spokesman for "Diversity"; it would be far better to have a spokesman for "Integration". The former concept empahasises difference (even division), while the latter concept emphasises those matters that unite people of all backgrounds.

Well done, Louise. Isn't it interesting that the left's commitment to "diversity" is in fact nothing more than an obsession with the colour of people's skin which would do credit to apartheid-era South Africa? As Louise rightly points out, Corby has plenty of Polish immigrants but presumably because they are white, and worse in many cases Catholic, they do not "count" towards Labour's diversity goals.

Much of government is about social engineering. Labour uses public sector jobs as a tool, Conservatives use tax-breaks. Both are questionable forms of meddling but, if you desire specific social outcomes, you do have to choose some tools.

Equality of access to jobs is an important principle and, while I instinctively dislike quotas, how else can you ensure this is achieved?

Take another example: the shortage of housing stock in the South. The BBC and some other public bodies are relocating to the North in order to shift demand - which is a sensible decision that I wholly agree with. So if it’s permissible to move jobs to equalise regional access, why isn’t it also permissible to move jobs to equalise racial access?

This is what happens when you have a positive affirmation policy, discrimination against the majority.
This though will be the tip of the ice-berg, the government is bringing in dictat's to make all public sector employers conform to an equal employment policy that represents the so-called diversity of the UK. This is discriminatory, and is a throw back to the discredited policy of multi-culturism, which seeks to create a divided society, rather than treating all incomers as British and demanding that they make the effort to learn the language and culture of the country that they have chosen to come to.
Louise Bagshawe has discovered the first stage of this invidious government plan, to create another tier, to the culture of dependancy, by the creation of jobs for specific ethnic minorities. The hope being clearly that these people will vote for the party that got them the jobs. Certain ethnic minorities may well take that to the limit, by brokering their votes and demanding yet more deals, aimed specifically at achieving "greater independance" for themselves, at the expense of others. What chance that Leicester may end up as the first city to have sharia law? as a result of this policy.
Surely government jobs should not be sold on in this fashion. We know that it goes on, but this particular piece of work is outrageous and highly discriminatory against a section of the community and as has been suggested needs to be referred to Trevor Phillip's outfit. If nothing is done, one can see parties such as the BNP/NF making headway here.
Ultimately this action will achieve nothing, unless the Prison Authority fires all the staff at Corby and re-hires Leicester based people according to the new crtieria. If that is the end-game then one expects the unions to throw a serious temper tantrum, unless they subscribe to the policy.
I wish Louise well in her campaigning to expose the mendacity and double dealing of NuLab and the utter stupidity of the Prison Authority's PC attitudes.

Because in this case, as Louise has illustrated, it isn't equalising racial access: it is penalising some racial minorities at the expense of others, seemingly using the utterly arbitrary criterion of skin colour.

In any case, you are in danger of swallowing the left's philosophy of pigeon-holing people by means of arbitrary classifications such as race. Individuals don't think of themselves in scuh terms nor should they. If we want a balkanised society, which the left undoubtedly does, quota culture is the way to proceed.

Michael - rather than swallowing the left's philosophy, I'm trying to make their case. Indignant Conservative outrage won't persuade a single left-winger that they're wrong. Understanding and addressing their argument might.

"Take another example: the shortage of housing stock in the South. The BBC and some other public bodies are relocating to the North in order to shift demand - which is a sensible decision that I wholly agree with. So if it’s permissible to move jobs to equalise regional access, why isn’t it also permissible to move jobs to equalise racial access?"

Because relocating to areas of high unemployment is not inherently racially discriminatory. Using ethnicity as a ground for relocating is inherently racially discriminatory. Corby is a poorer town than Leicester, which makes this policy particularly unjust.

Additionally, trying to make an argument in left wing terms is unlikely to be successful, Valedictoryan. If one accepts the premise (which I don't) that the government must attempt to equalise outcomes between different racial groups, then one is led inevitably to favour things like racial quotas.

Congrats to Louise! What needs to happen is a 'clearing of the decks' (ie) get rid of pc whitehall civil servants) when we get back into government. This theory that moving jobs to 'ethnic' areas encourages 'integration' and 'social mobility' is all bollards. In Scotland, jobs from Edinburgh have been moved to Glasgow, with the effect that people have stated quite clearly that they do not-under any circumstances- wish to move to Glasgow. The labour government's attempts at social engineering are the opposite end of the scale to that used by a certain German government of the 1930's!

Thank you, Sean. Very well put. Simply dismissing those who disagree with you, Valedictoryan, as indulging in "indignant Conservative outrage" also fails to be persuade. It isn't even accurate in my case. I am not a Conservative - small or large c - and didn't vote Tory in 2005.

The left's policy isn't even a policy of equality of access: it is a policy of privileging certain arbitrarily-selected groups over others, whose objective needs are at least as great. There is nothing egalitarian about that.

I find this story rather amusing, remembering travelling in the back of a H.M. Prison Service Category "A" van, and hearing the racist comments of the prison officers as we travelled through cities like Leicester and Birmingham.

I suspect that the Prison Service has good operational reasons for the move, and that the racist Daily Mail is just stirring up the brown stuff.

"Sean, then the argument for you to make is why government should not be responsible for breaking the status-quo and for equalising outcomes."

Because all previous attempts have failed? Soviet Communism was equalisation taken to the extreme and look what happened there. Conversely, Victorian England with its minimal state was an age of fast economic growth and social solidarity amongst the disadvantaged who made an effort to look after themselves.

Social engineering isn't the role of a government that does very little.

The role of the state is to equalise opportunity, not outcome. Unless of course you are a pure maxist who believes in "from each according to their labours, to each according to their needs".

A sensible welfare policy which makes doing nothing an uncomfortable, but not unlivable option, coupled with incentives to work and invest, allows progress to be made.

So-called "progressive" politics is anything but. It seeks to hold back hard working, intelligent or talented people in the name of some vague notion of fairness, when in truth, it just holds all of us back.

I hope Cameron makes a good deal of political capital out of this. Public opinion will be outraged. I also see Trevor Phillips wants racial quotas - another measure that the public will dissaprove of. With any luck this will be the beginning of the end for the PC race relations industry with its constant attempts to justify its existence by finding racism where there isn't any.

What is going on? To put in context, this comes in the week that Labour MP's have called for debates on slavery, abuse of trade unions by insurgents in Iraq (no joke) and Gordon Brown ccalled for new citizens to pick up litter.

If conservativehome needs to debate whether equalising outcomes is what a goverment should be doing I think that all hope is lost.

There are two types of discrimination- first there is discrimination on the basis of a consideration of the objective merits of an individual's ability to do a particular job and second, there is discrimination on the basis of irrelevant characteristics shared by a group. The former should be encouraged, the latter should be eradicated.

The story is about the latter type of discrimination- in negative form against the poor white folk of Corby and in 'postitive' form in favour of coloured minorities in Leicester. There's nothing wrong with taking action to help to remove artificial barriers to entry where people believe that a certain line of work "is not for my sort" (this is the most efficient thing to do as it widens the available pool of labour for all jobs and increases competitiveness) but once that has been done that's it. If fewer ginger haired folk apply for a particular type of job than the proportion of gingers in society that's a statistical accident not a matter of discrimination.

"If conservativehome needs to debate whether equalising outcomes is what a goverment should be doing I think that all hope is lost"

Quite. But I presume that Valedictoryan is playing Devil's Advocate.

Governments should not equalise outcomes, because (a) it infringes personal freedom, as outcomes can only be equalised through massive State coercion (b) it's unjust, as it penalises success and rewards failure and (c) it's inefficient, as less well-qualified people have to be promoted over and above better-qualified people.

In fact, no government (not even Stalinist Russia) has ever equalised outcomes, and it's hard to see how any society could operate effectively on that basis.

Moves to equalise outcomes between racial groups, through government action, have all the undesirable effects mentioned above, and for that reason, are likely to poison relations between different racial groups.

'Ann Beasley, highlights the fact that 40% of Leicester's population are not 'white British' as a "key influencing factor" on the decision to remove jobs from 94% 'white British Corby'
As someone who served as a Race Relations Assessor in Crown Courts for 15 years until 1994 when I moved to France, I would say that under the Race Relations Act 1976 as then obtained and in asnwer to Richard's post at 09.11, it was always the case that discimination because of 'colour, creed, etc' was not allowed, and it applied equally to discrimination against white people as well as other hues. That Act has now been superseeded I believe but I doubt that in essentials it has changed.

Strictly speaking, that is correct Gwendolyn. However, while "positive discrimination" is prohibited by law, "positive action" is mandated on all public bodies, following the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.

Michael, I said "Indignant Conservative outrage won't persuade a single left-winger that they're wrong."

You replied: "Simply dismissing those who disagree with you, Valedictoryan, as indulging in indignant Conservative outrage also fails to be persuade."

It's childish to pretend that you represented me accurately because you quoted three words from what I said.

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"If conservativehome needs to debate whether equalising outcomes is what a goverment should be doing I think that all hope is lost."

Angelo, if we're just preaching to the choir I'll go home now.

I know several left-wingers who read this blog regularly (mostly jealously that their party can't match it). When they just see outrage, it doesn't challenge their beliefs at all. We have to make our arguments rationally, not instinctively. Just saying that this is racism smacks of NIMBYism.

What I said in the first place was misleadingly described by you as "indignant Conservative outrage". It was in fact classical liberal criticism of the coercive discriminatory and often racist methods which the left use to promote the minorities they approve of and to do down the minorities they loath. The only person resorting to abuse is you. I don't expect to persuade leftwing commentators, who cling atavistically to the gods that long ago failed them. I seek to persuade the uncommitted. That has nothing to do with preaching to the choir. The left's inflexible starting point is that any difference not sanctioned by its own dogma is unacceptable and to be obliterated by force of law. Any critic of this view will be attacked as a reactionary frothing at the mouth or words to that effect. Such people are beyond persuasion....so why you are devoting time to giving an undeserved credibility to their views escapes me.

As someone who abhors the BNP I really wonder at Labour policy - actions like this do rather make the BNP's job easier. We had Bradford with BNP saying investment was going to asian neighbourhoods, East London with BNP claiming immigrants were getting first choice in housing and special assistance. Now when reasonable politicians say that's rubbish the BNP can point to Corby & Leicester for proof.
Positive action has a cost - it discriminates against those excluded and builds resentment. In some cases that cost can be less than the benefits that accrue by greater social cohesion and integration of otherwise excluded minorities (less upset excluded than there are newly included). But there is a cost - and in Blair's Britain that often means people turning to the BNP.

Another story where the BNP were first pooh-poohed and then proved right was that some schools with large Muslim populations were serving halal meat without informing non-Muslim pupils and parents, and giving them the option to refuse.

"Another story where the BNP were first pooh-poohed and then proved right was that some schools with large Muslim populations were serving halal meat without informing non-Muslim pupils and parents, and giving them the option to refuse."

If I am not mistaken, halal meat is no different to any other meat other than the way it is killed. As such, the fact that the this story is raised at all says more about the people who raised it than the school, surely?

Matt
Yes you can - if there is evidence of discrimination then action to reverse that discrimination can be acceptable on basis of benefits of positive discrimination outweighing the costs. I'm generally not in favour of discrimination in either positive or negative terms but can see cases where it is a better course of action - so I must be a relativist (or is that a conservative because conservatives tend not to see things in absolutes)

A poice force, say in a large US City, which discriminates in favour of Irish police officers and against black, hispanic, jewish, etc. Policing requires the consent and acceptance of the populace. Therefore positively discriminating in favour of increasing the non-Irish might well upset the Irish, a cost, but improve policing and gain better enforcement as populace accept the more diverse police force, benefit.

If, as in this case, there is no discrimination to start with then to introduce discrimination is a great wrong.

According to the Director General of the Prison Service, Phil Wheatley, this afternoon, when I greeted him with the word "diversity" on the phone, he replied, "funny you should say that, somebody else was just mentioning the same".

Therefore, it was not operational reasons but policy considerations which dictated the move. He stated that he had to meet the performance target set by the Home Office.

One has to commend Louise Bagshawe for exposing the shocking racism of the smirking Mdm. Beasley - oh, but of course if whites are being discriminated against it is not racism is it!!!!, at least that seems to be the opinion of Beasley. If despite Louise Bagshawe's good work, the BNP pick up a number of seats in that area, this tainted, mendacious government have only themselves to blame, but I doubt of Mdm. Beasley would see it like that.

Valedictoryan - you must be joking. Point me the way to a Labour blogger who is defending this debacle. I don't know a single person Labour voter or otherwise who could defend this - and yet you trot out the "mustn't be seen to complain" line. That's pathetic - this may be news to you, but people are sick of the Tories failing to oppose this kind of nonsense properly.

"Red Sam, it's impertinent for those in authority to simply assume that non-Muslims are quite happy to eat halal food. Some people object to the way it's prepared."

Why? It is money saving and pragmatic, as far as I can see. I have never met anyone who objects to how Halal meat is prepared, and would expect noone to be able to tell the difference if they were not told.

No Ted sorry but I can't agree with that I'm afraid. I have always believed that the very essence of conservatism was a total belief in meritocracy, perhaps that is absolutist but it must surely be right. Any form of discrimination, positive or otherwise, is an affront to people being given opportunities based purely upon their own personal merits. To try to adjust a perceived discrimination, as in your hypothetical American Policing example, with another discrimination just perpetuates the idea that any kind of discrimination can be acceptable if someone (and just who should have that right?) thinks that the circumstances merit it. That kind of relativism is a nasty slippery slope that once again proves the old addage that two wrongs don't make a right.

Talking of policing as Ted and Matt Davis were, it is worth recalling the debacle of Gloucestershire police's unlawful anti-white recruitment policy.

Last September, Minette Marin did a brilliant critique of the social engineers' self hate . Here's a short extract:

"What, in this lamentable story, is this guilty obsession with race, this daft and patronising determination to exclude and demoralise the indigenous people? It is actually imposed in Gloucestershire by people who are mostly white males themselves. What is wrong with them? Why are they unwilling to hold the line against thoughtless, intrusive, guilt-ridden, destructive stupidity? One word for it is self-hatred. Another is decadence."

The full article is well worth reading and can still be found here:
http://www.minettemarrin.com/minettemarrin/2006/09/weve_stopped_st.html#comments

Valedictoryan- clearly we have to take the argument to those who don't share our views, but there are a lot of people out there who don't believe in equality of outcome as a valid policy goal who we need to speak to first.

I'd rather we persuaded the strivers in society that their personal goal of battling to do the very best they can for themselves and their families was the right thing and something that we would support and encourage better than anyone else than that we waste time and effort trying to persuade people who believe that strivers are uppity peasants who should be hung as an example when their farms are collectivised in the name of equality of outcome.

Why? It is money saving and pragmatic, as far as I can see. I have never met anyone who objects to how Halal meat is prepared, and would expect noone to be able to tell the difference if they were not told.

The objection is that Halal slaughter, as currently practised in Britain, does not allow the animal to be 'stunned'

The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), which advises the government on how to avoid cruelty to livestock, says the way Kosher and Halal meat is produced causes severe suffering to animals.